Mark Strong Interview

Why Men Need Superheroes

What superheroes do you like?

Mark Strong: We don’t have that in our culture in Britain, but I suppose Superman was the most famous. Dark Knight, but I was aware of Superman because he’s a hero and he’s super. The whole mythology of Green Lantern -- anything that it is addictive -- there are so many layers. A guy not only finds a dying alien and becomes aware there are aliens, but he gets this ring, and the ring, which is charged on a battery, allows him to use his imagination to construct anything. And then he goes to where there are lots of aliens, and, not only that, he is part of a cosmic police force. The levels that keep happening in the story make it the most interesting for me.

Do you think he should be updated -- instead of a battery, say, using a USB?

MS: Originally, the lantern was an old railway lantern. You gotta keep that! It’s Green Lantern, not Green Hero. It’s just not the same. It’s been around 70 years because it’s successful and interesting, so you don’t want to mess with that too much.

There is a lot of explication delivered because it is the beginning of something that has its own mythology. So how do you wrest the juice out of it, with all that verbiage?

MS: Martin Campbell calls it pipe-laying. The thing about this first one is you have to lay the plumbing so that if there are more you can move forward from here. That was quite a task. Like you said, Green Lantern has so many levels to go beyond to get the whole mythology. Essentially, Superman fights crime. The other level is Krypton and the power that makes him weak. Batman is just Batman fighting crime. But all these levels that have to be ticked off to understand the Green Lantern mythology are fascinating. Like all good things, they require a lot of work. The more you learn about it, the more rich it is and the more it resonates. He found he had to include all that in the first film: who the Lanterns are, what the ring does, what’s essential, which we don’t have to do from here on.

Do you love Green Lantern and other comics now? Did working on the film open up a whole new world to you?

MS: I’m concentrating on Green Lantern, and not with my friends, but with my kids. Suddenly, now I’ve got Sinestro figures and rings, and they’re doing that whole thing. There is nothing else like this that I’ve been able to introduce them to. I haven’t gone to the other superheroes yet. I’ve got my work cut out for me. They sent me a load of back comics and books. It’s enormous! I haven’t scratched the surface, but it is addictive, and in time, I’ll get to learn the others.

Have you signed for a sequel?

MS: You sign for a sequel for everything these days, just in case, options. In the past, you avoided them like the plague because it meant somewhere down the road you couldn’t take a job because you had to do a sequel. Now it’s a feature of pretty much any feature you do.

Your kids must think you are the coolest guy.

MS: They’re young two boys. My eldest is six. The three-and-a-half-year-old doesn’t get it, but the six-year-old is just starting to perceive something about it. I had to think about sitting him down the other day and explaining stuff to him. I heard him in swimming pool with a bunch of kids, and I heard them saying, “Does your dad know David Beckham?” I could see his eyes thinking, “What does this mean? Why my dad?” And someone came up to me at a literary festival in Wales and asked for my autograph, and I saw his eyes go up. I have to explain to him that it doesn’t mean anything; it’s just a feature of my job. It’s a responsible attitude to how he’s going to deal with this. But having said that, yeah, the irony is me playing the villain. The villain is the good guy in my house, so when they’re playing with figures, they’re playing not with Hal but with Sinestro.

They'll take you to show-and-tell day.

MS: That’s precisely the thing I’ve got to be careful about and help him understand that it’s just my job, and it doesn’t mean I’m better or worse than anybody else. It’s going to be a task. I don’t know how to explain that to a six-year-old.